Wow, thanks for actually checking out my “about me” page!  My name is Spencer Haws, and what can I say; I like business ideas.  I’ve always had the “problem” of going after lots of different ideas – rather than focusing on just one.  Well, now I’ve gone out and created this blog that just feeds this problem and I just hide it with a cool name – Niche Pursuits!

So, you get to watch me either self destruct as I attempt various business ideas (that you will have a big input on deciding what I do) or hopefully you will see me make a few bucks along the way and potentially you will find a business idea that you can be passionate about too.

Also, just to be upfront, I already make a substantial full-time income online.  I own over 200 niche websites primarily monetized by Google Adsense and my main focus is building this niche websites empire.  However, the purpose of this blog is to diversify that income and discuss other ideas.

Anyway, here’s a quick run down on me.  I grew up in sunny Mesa, Arizona and love to get back and visit family and friends when I can.  I now live in Richland, WA (where my wife grew up). My dad started his own company when I was about 21, and this had a huge influence on me deciding to finally graduate in Business Management from BYU in 2002.

I was in college during some of the dot com boom/bust years and this also had an impact on me.  A couple of years after I graduated – probably 2005 – I started dabbling around with creating websites.  I was pretty bad at it.  But after a few years I finally figured out how search engine optimization worked.  I also discovered that I could rank my websites in Google much easier for low competition keywords than high competition (pretty amazing stuff huh?) and this directly led to my success.

However, it didn’t come all at once.  From about 2005 to the middle of 2009 I basically made no money, but just learned a lot about websites and SEO.  During that time I worked as a Business Relationship Manager for at Wells Fargo Bank and also got my MBA from Arizona State University in 2007 (my back up plan).

Then towards the end of 2009 I really started to find some success building niche websites.  In 2010 I went a little nuts with it and built almost 200 websites that year targeting low competition keywords.  Well, I had some lows (getting deindexed from Google wasn’t fun), but I also had some highs.  I learned how to build better quality sites and prevent future problems with Google.  You can read about some of these adventures on my previous blog: Niche Adsense Challenge. All in all by the end of 2010, I was ready to quit my full time job and pursue my business full-time.

However, being the over cautious person financially that I am (okay my wife had something to do with it too); I decided to wait until March 11th, 2011 to quit my job.  Since that day, I have been working full-time from home!  My income has been well above what my day job income was and I’m enjoying building my online business.  Now its time to go out and try some niche pursuits!

Other than that, I have always loved the outdoors and sports.  I try to play racquetball once a week, and I have run a couple of marathons.  But now I may get back into doing more sprint triathlons (I did several in college).  I’ve been married for 8 years and have 3 awesome children.

So, that’s my quick background…enjoy my Niche Pursuits!